


to cherish, to hold, to share

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 15:46:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7367734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen fits just right in Ireland. With her red hair and air of resolve, she enchants all his family. His brother Colin expressed some displeasure at the blind loyalty of a maid to her employer but Gwen had stared him in the face and told him that she was Sybil's friend first and foremost, and Tom's too, and if thet was good enough for them why wouldn't she be good enough for the rest of the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	to cherish, to hold, to share

Gwen fits just right in Ireland. With her red hair and air of resolve, she enchants all his family. His brother Colin expressed some displeasure at the blind loyalty of a maid to her employer but Gwen had stared him in the face and told him that she was Sybil's friend first and foremost, and Tom's too, and if thet was good enough for them why wouldn't she be good enough for the rest of the world?

It charmed everyone. Especially his mother, who expressed some sadness that it wasn't Gewn he was eloping with.

(he'd snorted and said he loved sybil. sybil, who right at the moment was laying down in his childhood bed, whispering in the itchy sheets with gwen, keeping the bed warm for when he joined them

he'd snorted and looked his mother in the eyes and she'd smiled, like she knew what he meant to say.

 _i love them both. we couldn't choose. why should we have to?_ )

It is a good thing, though, because Sybil has a harder time of it.

 Everything is so very different, the people are carelessly welcoming but not never silent with what they think, and for someone used to Mary's quiet sharpness and Edith's soft resentment, this loud opposition to her old life leaves her wrong-footed, in a way. Hurt, sometimes, though Tom assures her that it isn't her that people have something against, that they like her well enough and will grow to love her as he does.

The younger cousins and nephews and neighbors flock to Gwen, a veteran from the far away years when she herded her siblings. Sybil stares at everything and refuses to be left out, gets herself invited to the kitchen gossiping with the other women. Three days after she arrive he wakes up to find her washing the dishes with his sister, laughing at tales from his childhood. When Gwen admits she doesn't like to sew or anything, his mother starts teaching Sybil how to knit, to make sure they keep warm in the winters.

They're so brave, his girls. Culture shock is felt and conquered, eventually, braved as a unit. 

They more to Dublin. He gets a job in a newspaper, Sybil takes to nursing again gratefully, glad t of return to the organized chaos of an hospital, and Gwen walks the streets and the sites for weeks before finding somewhere to fit, somewhere to carve a Gwen-shaped place for herself. She ends up being accepted as a secretary in an Embassy . Tom teases her for information over dinner while Sybil leaves her blood-soaked apron to soak. They take turns reading aloud, political essays and novels and parodies. Gwen bakes and Tom cooks and Sybil knits them all mismatched scarves, crooked gloves. 

It is strange, sometimes. One more mouth to feed is always one more mouth to feed, even if a very beloved mouth, with a smart tongue and a wry smile. They have to be careful to keep separate bedrooms, even if Gwen'd is more of a office. Only Tom and Sybil wear rings, because the laws of God and Man won't allow for more, but they surprise her with a necklace, rose gold and bought third-hand, worn with love and care.

The world will always look at Gwen oddly, the burden, the old spinster living off her friend's generosity, never mind that her paycheck is more generous that either of their. She won't bear children, and thought the ones that come in time will love her as well as one, will call her auntie, to the world they will not _hers_ , as they ought to be. It makes Tom so angry, sometimes, that there are so many that would spit on her for the choice that only hers to make.  

  
( _i don't want_ that, she says, the night after they signed the papers, her as witness and Tom and Sybil as lawfully wedded spouses. _I love you tom_ , _and I will love all of your children as my own, but that really doesn't do anything for me. I'd rather just watch, really._

he kisses the top of her head and sybil kisses her mouth and gwen, she watches. it takes work to figure it out but neither of them is the sort to be easily daunted.

they are rich with love, all of them, generous with affection in its very shape).

She wears the necklace proudly everyday for the rest of her life, goes home to her loves every night, and in the end that is more than enough.

 


End file.
